Psycho's Movie Reviews #294: BloodRayne (2005)

BloodRayne is a 2005 German-American fantasy action horror film set in 18th-century Romania, directed by Uwe Boll. The film stars Kristanna Loken, Michael Madsen, Matthew Davis, Will Sanderson, Billy Zane, Udo Kier, Michael Paré, Meat Loaf, Michelle Rodriguez, Ben Kingsley, and Geraldine Chaplin. The screenplay by Guinevere Turner is based on the video game of the same name from Majesco Entertainment and the game developer, Terminal Reality.

The third video game film adaptation by Boll, who previously made the films based on House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark, BloodRayne received extremely negative reviews upon release and was a box office bomb, grossing only $3.7 million from a $25 million budget.

Plot

Rayne is an unholy breed of human and vampire known as a dhampir. Dhampir are unaffected by crucifixes and do not thirst for human blood, but maintain a vampire weakness to holy water. She is the daughter of the Vampire King, Kagan, who has gathered an army of thralls, both vampire and human, in order to annihilate the human race. She was conceived when Kagan raped her mother, and she later witnessed him killing her when she rejected his advances.

Sebastian, Vladimir, and Katarin are three members of the Brimstone Society, a group of warriors sworn to fight vampires. They hear of a carnival freak who may be a dhampir, so Vladimir plans to recruit her in order to kill Kagan. Kagan is also hunting for her, fearing she will interfere with his plans. Rayne escapes captivity at the carnival when her keeper tries to rape her. On the road, she encounters and saves a family being attacked by vampires. A fortune teller reveals to Rayne that Kagan has become the most powerful vampire in the land and resides in a well-protected castle. She tells Rayne that Kagan seeks an ancient talisman, a mystical eye, and if she finds it, it would allow her to gain an audience with him. Rayne sets out to the monastery where it is hidden to find it.

Rayne shelters for the night at the monastery and later sneaks away to where the talisman is guarded by a hammer-wielding, deformed monk, who she kills. The talisman is further protected by booby traps, and when Rayne lifts it from its pedestal, the chamber floods with holy water. As Rayne hangs from the ceiling to avoid the water, the talisman falls from the box but she catches the eyeball. Examining it closely, the eye magically becomes absorbed into her own eye, and when she falls into the water she is somehow unaffected by it.

When she leaves the chamber, the monks explain the artifact is one of three body parts which came from an ancient vampire called Belial, who had found a way to overcome the weaknesses of a vampire. The eye overcomes holy water, the rib overcomes the cross, and the heart overcomes sunlight. When Belial died, the parts of his body were hidden across the land. As Kagan desires all these parts in order to assume Belial's powers, it becomes the heroes' mission to stop him.

Rayne is brought to the headquarters of the Brimstone Society and they agree to work together to kill Kagan. Katarin does not trust Rayne and betrays Brimstone to her father, Elrich, who has fallen in league with Kagan, but seeks to betray him and gain power for himself. The location of the heart talisman is known to Katarin as her grandfather hid it in water-filled caves. She seeks it out but Rayne kills her and takes it. With the talisman, Rayne attempts to gain an audience before Kagan, but he takes the heart and throws her in the dungeon. He plans to extract the eye as part of a ritual. He realizes too late that Rayne had only given him an empty box and not the heart.

Sebastian and Vladimir intervene, battling Kagan and his minions, but both are fatally wounded, leaving Rayne in a final battle against Kagan. As Sebastian dies he fires a final bolt from his crossbow, but Kagan is too quick and is able to catch it. Rayne is able to summon her last reserves of strength and plunge the bolt into his heart. The battle ends, and Sebastian chooses to die rather than let Rayne save him. Rayne seats herself in Kagan's throne, and reflects on the events that led to her father's death. Rayne then leaves the castle and rides off into the mountains.

Production

Screenwriter Guinevere Turner turned in the first draft two weeks late. Rather than ask for redrafts, Boll accepted it and then made many of his own changes; and he then asked the actors to "take a crack at it". Turner estimated only 20% of her script was actually filmed.

Filming took place in Romania, in the Carpathian Mountains. Filming also took place in a castle where Prince Vlad the Impaler presumably spent a night once.

Release/Reception/Box Office

The film opened in 985 theatres across the United States on 6 January 2006. It was originally to have played at up to 2,500 theatres, but that number dropped to 1,600 and ended up lower due to prints being shipped to theatres that had not licensed the film.

Billy Zane was involved with distributor Romar Entertainment and Uwe Boll later sued him for revenue owed.

BloodRayne was critically negative. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 4% approval rating based on 54 reviews, with an average rating of 2.94/10. The site's consensus reads: "BloodRayne is an absurd sword-and-sorcery vid-game adaptation from schlock-maestro Uwe Boll, featuring a distinguished (and slumming) cast". It was ranked 48th in Rotten Tomatoes's 100 worst reviewed films of the 2000s. On Metacritic it has a weighted average score of 18% based on 13 reviews, summarizing the reviews as "overwhelming dislike".

Joe Leydon of Variety said that the film "lurches from incident to incident at a graceless plodding place, offering little in the way of genuine excitement—the swordfights often are confusingly cut and choreographed—and only minimal amounts of guilty-pleasure titillation". Maitland McDonagh of TV Guide wrote: "Though indisputably the best of Uwe Boll's first three video-game-into-film adaptations, this gory, ludicrous horror-action picture isn't good by any standard". Critics ridiculed Boll for hiring actual prostitutes instead of actors for a scene featuring Meat Loaf in order to save on production costs.

Some critics were more forgiving of the film. Berge Garabedian of JoBlo's movie reviews described as the film as "actually pretty decent .. for what it is", namely a video game adaptation, with a hot lead actress in the form of Kristanna Loken and a number of surprisingly fun and bloody action sequences. He acknowledges the dialog is poor and the story lame but says the film is "not as bad as you'd suspect" and an adequate, bloody, low-budget vampire film. Steve Chupnick of the Latino Review gave the film a B rating, saying that although it was not a good film, it was far from the worst he's seen and mentioned the Kristanna Loken nude scene as something in the film's favour.

Actor Michael Madsen called BloodRayne "an abomination a horrifying and preposterous movie", but added that he enjoyed working with Boll and would certainly work with him again if asked. Laura Bailey, who was the voice of Rayne in the BloodRayne games, was asked at her panel at Anime Boston 2007 what her thoughts were on the film adaptation, and said: "Oh God, that movie sucked. And that movie was so bad. I saw it on The Movie Channel and I couldn't even get through 20 minutes of it! It was so bad and it was kinda sad that they took that because I really liked the games". Guinevere Turner, who wrote the draft screenplay, found the film laughable and suggested that it was the "worst movie ever made" but that it was so camp it might ripen with age.

In its opening, the film only made US$1,550,000. The film ended up grossing US$3,591,980 (June 2006) against a production budget of US$25 million.

Budget $25 million

Box office $3.7 million

{I'm speechless, I can't believe Ben Kingsley was in this film... And honestly he was the best character}

My Review

BloodRayne is set in 18th Century Romania where a half Vampire & half human known as a Dhampir named Rayne (Kristanna Locken) is an exhibit in a side-show carnival as a freak, she remembers how a powerful Vampire called Kagan (Ben Kingsley) raped her human mother to create her & then murdered her when she was still a young girl. Rayne wants revenge & after escaping the carnival sets about finding an eye, an eye that belonged to a Vampire who had all the strengths of a Vampire but none of the weaknesses. If the eye along with his heart & rib which are also hidden were to be assimilated it could create a new super race of near invincible Vampires that would take over the world. Along the way Rayne teams up with some Vampire hunters from a secret society known as Brimstone who also want to stop Kagan & see him dead...

This German American co-production was co-produced & directed by Uwe Boll who has already gained an unwanted reputation as a bad filmmaker so it's no real surprise that BloodRayne seems just about one of the most hated films ever. I have read many comments here on the IMDb about BloodRayne & the one thing that they almost all have in common is they're attacks on Boll as a director, I see very little in these comments as to suggest why BloodRayne is a bad film other than Uwe Boll directed it. I sometimes wonder what people's criteria is for judging a film & BloodRayne is such a case in point, I'm sorry but I actually thought it was a fairly enjoyable if ultimately forgettable fantasy/action/horror film & for that I apologise to no-one. I just can't see what it is about BloodRayne that people hate so much, I just can't. The script by Guinevere Turner was based on the Atari video game BloodRayne (2002) which I freely admit I haven't played & have absolutely no idea what it is about, as far as video game adaptations go I actually thought BloodRayne is one of the better attempts & I certainly enjoyed it more than Street Fighter (1994) & Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001). At a little over 90 minutes the film moves along at a reasonable pace, there's plenty of gory action set-pieces & on a dumb sort of level I was entertained by it. However the character's are really poor, they are given silly sounding names & as such it's sometimes hard to relate to people & the dialogue could have been better but then again maybe this is how people spoke in 18th Century Romania, you never know. The story is functional & your typical Dungeons & Dragons fare with some evil guy needing some artefact or item which will allow him to have all sorts of evil unlimited powers, the narrative isn't the best as the film awkwardly & sometimes seemingly randomly goes from one fight to another with little reason.

Credit where credit is due & one has to say that BloodRayne looks really nice & very polished, in fact I'd say BloodRayne looks splendid. There is some wonderful looking scenery & plenty of sweeping aerial shots across the vast landscapes which give the film real scope & a certain expansive feel. The production design is top notch as well with some magnificent Gothic style castles, dungeons, caves & villages which all add to the atmosphere. I thought BloodRayne was a very visually impressive film & that has to be in part down to Boll who is regarded by many it seems as the worst director ever. I sat down & watched BloodRayne knowing it's bad reputation & I specifically looked out for anything that would support that reputation but I really couldn't see anything, apart from a slightly underdeveloped & forgettable story I thought it was pretty good. There's some good special effects here as well with plenty of well choreographed fights & battles which contain pleasing amounts of spurting blood & slashed throats.

With a supposed budget of about $25,000,000 one has to say BloodRayne looks very nice with quite an epic feel to it, the production design, music, cinematography & special effects are also well above average. Shot in Bucharest & Transylvania in Romania. There's a pretty impressive cast here including Kristanna Locken (looking sexy in tight leather), Michael Madsen, Udo Kier, Meat Loaf in a wig surrounded by naked Romanian prostitutes (hey, it's nice work if you can get it... right Mr. Loaf?), Michael Pare, Billy Zane, Michelle Rodriguez & the Oscar winning Sir Ben Kingsley no less. Unfortunately most of them seem to be there for the money & the performances aren't great.

BloodRayne by all accounts is the worst film ever if you believe what you read, well I can assure you now it's nowhere near the worst film ever made. I must say the flimsy story & poor character's meant my interest did start to wain but the action, the gore & the nice visuals kept me watching until the end. A lot of people say it's the worst film ever, with no good reason to back it up I might add, so maybe I'm in the minority for liking it. Followed by BloodRayne II: Deliverance (2007) & BloodRayne 3 (2009). 7.7/10